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Running Away From the Ryan Budget

By MICHAEL A. NEEDHAM

April 16, 2014

For the fourth year in a row, the House of Representatives passed a budget drafted by Rep. Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican and head of the House Budget Committee. Properly understood, a congressional budget sets priorities and, as we saw with Ryan’s early efforts to reform Medicare, can shift the trajectory of politics and policy. Chairman Ryan and his committee deserve credit for their efforts. Unfortunately, since 2010, there has been a notable unwillingness among House Republicans — particularly their leadership — to fight for the policies embodied in Ryan’s budgets.

Everybody understands the governing limitations of having only one house of Congress. But the only way to win a debate is to have a debate. And the only way to have one is to start one. Conservatives, especially those outside of Washington, are frustrated that Republicans frequently shy away from their ostensible policy priorities before the fight with Harry Reid and Barack Obama even begins. Why are we negotiating with ourselves?

The ongoing debate over government-sponsored housing companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is illustrative. Ryan’s 2014 fiscal-year budget envisions eventually eliminating the two mortgage giants, “winding down their government guarantee and ending taxpayer subsidies.” House Finance Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) set out to do just that with his Protecting American Taxpayers and Homeowners (PATH) Act. Even though the bill passed out of committee last July, Republican leaders have refused to schedule it for floor consideration. Although Republicans again approved Ryan’s Fannie and Freddie language this year, there’s no sign the House actually intends to make good on this repeated promise.

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A similar dynamic exists on the tax reform. Last year’s House-passed budget called on Congress to consider “the full myriad of pro-growth plans as it moves toward implementing the tax reform called for under this budget.” Ten months later, as House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) prepared to release his tax reform proposal, a Republican leadership aide dismissed the effort in a Capitol Hill paper, saying leadership wasn’t “doing back flips that he’s doing this.”

While one could argue there was no catalyst for legislative action on these issues, the same could not be said for food-stamp reform. Ryan’s 2014 budget proposed savings of an estimated $125 billion over 10 years. Given the then-upcoming food stamp and farm bill reauthorization, the Republican-controlled House had the perfect opportunity to push those very reforms. Instead, they opted to save just $20 billion over 10 years. When conservatives demanded more, House Republican leaders offered up $40 billion — less than one-third of what was outlined in the budget. When the negotiations settled, President Obama signed an $8 billion cut into law. Nonetheless, Ryan’s 2015 budget calls again for saving that exact same $125 billion.

When House Republicans haven’t been failing to fight for reforms they’ve promised in past budgets, they’ve been undermining existing savings that those budgets have championed.

On flood insurance, the 2104 budget touted the importance of the Biggert-Waters reforms, which were meant to make the federal flood insurance program solvent, but concluded those “reforms are not enough to protect taxpayers” from future bailouts of a program that is already $24 billion in debt. Less than a year later, House Republican leaders acted to undermine these reforms, not to enhance them. Recognizing that inaction alone would have been truer to the House-passed budget, Ryan and 11 other committee chairmen voted against leadership’s Biggert-Waters rollback. Signaling total defeat on the issue, Ryan’s 2015 budget contained no mention of flood insurance or the need to protect taxpayers.

The debate over extending emergency unemployment insurance benefits represents another opportunity for House Republicans. Ryan’s 2014 budget assumed that these benefits would expire, and indeed they did, in December. His 2015 budget assumes they will not be renewed. Yet, according to news reports, “senior Republicans” are now pushing the House to take up an extension of those emergency benefits.

House Republicans and Chairman Ryan deserve credit for passing a budget, but Americans are growing tired of Washington’s budget-this-way, govern-that-way doublespeak. Lawmakers should not make the mistake, as Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) recently did, of suggesting a budget resolution alone is “a strong signal to our base that if we can deliver the election victories that we need, we’re prepared to make some really tough decisions.”

We will only believe that promise when we see some evidence to support it.